Press Here to Open

I've been thinking a lot about doors lately. This is mainly due to the fact that when I enter my workplace, I have to enter through one heavy fire-door, then scan my access card, and pass through another heavy fire-door; then if I choose to take the elevator, which I have been keen to do lately, I have to go through a series of two more sets of doors just like the first until I finally reach the area where my office is, where there is yet another heavy door that I then prop open each morning with a door stop. Each of these door sets are big and very heavy and I am usually carrying a heavy load with me (metaphorically and otherwise) and-- more often than not-- trying to balance a cup of hot coffee in one hand along with my phone in the other hand when I enter the building each morning, and so opening all of these doors has become something of an annoyance to me. Each morning my mind goes immediately to thinking  as I pull the doors open, "Why should they make it so HARD just to get into a place that I don't even want to be?" Queue the "Poor me, wah, wah," strings section of the orchestra. 

Mind you, having worked here for almost seven years, I spent the first six of them exclusively taking the stairs, because why should I make anything easy on myself? I think that I must have wanted for things to be hard, in some subconscious way. I must have thought that I deserved to struggle somehow, or that I would be rewarded in the spiritual realm for all my hard work. (Look at me, how I choose to take the hard road; look how determined I was to make things more challenging/difficult for myself. Surely someone will notice eventually how much I struggle, and therefore all of my efforts will be rewarded.)

This may be reaching, but eventually one day I realized that there is really nothing wrong with allowing the technology that we have (i.e. The Gifts of our Present Circumstances- in this case the gift being the elevator) carry us. I started going through those extra sets of heavy doors each morning in order to allow my body to be gently transported up to the second floor in mere seconds, and with hardly any effort to speak of. And for a while this felt like a nice respite from carrying myself and my heavy load up the stairs each morning. Until, eventually,  I started to feel annoyed by those pesky heavy doors. Soon those doors started to bug the shit out of me, and I began to really resent the doors for the barricade I imagined them to be in my professional life. I hated the doors for making things harder for me. Now I was finding myself feeling angry at the doors for their very existence. Of course I knew that it wasn't really the doors I was angry with. I was mad at myself for allowing myself to remain too long in a situation that was no longer serving my highest good, and I was using the doors as a metaphor to represent all that was holding me back from doing my dream.

Every morning I would literally think, "Fuck these doors," as I struggled to balance all of my crap in one hand and pull them open, one after the next after the next, becoming increasingly agitated until finally I arrived at the door to my office. And I'd sit down at my desk and begin my day mired in that pool of negativity.

One day as I was entering the building, I happened to be following closely behind Alan, a man who uses an electric wheelchair to get around due to being unable to walk & limited use of his arms/hands. I observed as he pushed the button for the automatic door-opener that is placed halfway up the wall for those using wheelchairs, and I watched him sail through each of these same doors I had struggled with (and-increasingly- hated) for the last 6 months. Before you start thinking too highly of me, this isn't some big revelation about how I came to understand the gifts of being able-bodied. This is simply a matter of a change in my perspective. 

 Seeing Alan breeze through this process that had been such a bear for me those past months allowed me to realize that those buttons work for everyone, not solely those on wheels. And so the next day I pressed the button and watched as the electric door magically opened for me to pass through. And then I did the same for the next door, and the next, until I arrived at my destination, and I thought ”Wow, that was exceedingly easy!” And then I did the same the next day. Eventually I came to realize that those buttons had been available to me all along, all I had to do was to notice them, and then choose to press them.

And now we come to the metaphorical part of the story. I started to apply this magical button-thinking to other areas in my life. Where else was I struggling and pushing too hard and getting mad when I didn't have to? Where were the "Press Here" buttons in my psyche that I could apply just as simply as pushing a button with my index finger, to open those doors which I was struggling so much in my mind just to walk through?

Over time I started to see the places where my own mind, in the form of fear, self-doubt, and unworthiness were holding me back from getting through to the other side where I dreamed of being. 

And so now here I sit, about to embark on a fresh path, where I will undoubtedly encounter more heavy doors. But I am hopeful that I will be more willing to spot the places where there is a sweet "press here to open" button. I intend not to let heavy doors hold me back anymore. Surely there is nearly always a "Press here to Open" button available. I may just have to look around a bit to find it.